who the fuck cares man there was 11 million subs now about 8-9 million thats still a shit on, FAR AS raids/guilds dying out, man this is a 10 + year old game. Eventually people will get sick of the game and move on. Just like me i played the game for 3 year + and is sick of it, so i quit, i am sure im not the only one.

look at other MMORPGS they don't have the number that WoW has especially top end guilds, you guys are lucky you will have "11,000 guilds killing lei shen" thats a sick amount of number.

im just waiting for final fantasy reborn as i have played the closed beta and im loving it, something wayy different then WOW, unlike rift(wow clone). its refreshing

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Originally Posted by Ronduwil

That pretty much sums up the point I was making. Why are raid guilds dying out? Because experienced raiders don't have time to raid any more and current raiders only want to recruit experienced raiders.

this is true but you can't do anything about this, unless you make raids super easy but then more ppl will quit due to it being too easy. Blizzard/WoW has to come up w/ something better/refreshing. Also try to bring back players that has gone away from the game for awhile. Some kind of incentive like even lowering the subscription.

Yeah. Because people would rather waste an hour and a half with 24 random strangers, one of whom is bound to be a troll, for a chance at subpar gear instead of spending 45 minutes with nine friends to clear the same content for guaranteed superior drops. That makes perfect sense. LFR is obviously at fault.

Once there were enough players for guilds to recruit, now there isn't. By all accounts LFR is very popular possibly due to its ease and convenience.

Raid guilds are a dying breed because people grow up and eventually get too smart to accept the ridiculous elitist attitude most raid leaders have. Easy as that.

This. Honestly I'm happy to see raiding guilds finally die out. Hoping that LFR becomes the mainstay of raiding across all MMOs that include such endgame activities. Mostly because it is a way for people to enjoy content with friends without having to devout a large portion of their online lives to it. That hardcore raiding environment also creates a lot of negative people. Let LFR become the new standard, let raid guilds die out, and see what happens. I apologize to any raiders that have found a healthy balance with their raid guild and have not become poisonous people, but this is just my generalized opinion on raiding.

"You hurt me long ago; my wounds bled for years. Now you are back, but I am not the same."

Its easy. There is no new people. Everyone on my raid team as been playing since wotlk of earlier. I would like to see the percentage of players new to WOW in MOP who are actually raiding and killing bosses in a normal or even heroic raid. Not many is my guess. There is no entry level to give these players the bug. For most people its that social environment that raiding with 10 or 25 people gives. LFR (current Entry Level Raiding) shows people the content but it does not give that social environment. No you get the one elitest jerk who puts people down, and thinks hes gods gift to the raid. Problem with this is a new player will get the wrong impression of raiders.

Hopefully Flex Raiding will solve this issue, but with flex raiding Blizz needs to consider giving LFR either the boot, or making it more undesirable. Either by making the ilvl's constant with the previous tiers gear, or releasing he current LFR content at the end of the content patch. This will get people into Flex raiding, and give them that intimate social raiding environment. With people who will help and guild the new players. Being a new player and downing all current content in an afternoon is not good for the game. Takes away the epicness, the struggles and rewards from the journey that is progression through raid tiers.

Get people back into Vent and Mumble, and Raid groups will form. People play this game 24hr a day. Everyone will be able to find a flex raid that fits their schedule...and if they miss a day, they can raid with out you.

If people quit because its too hard, why cant people quit because its too easy?

I'm sure some do. But very few people quit because they have cleared the PvE content. That means either they are part of that tiny minority, or they can't stand there being any easy content, or they are lying. In any of those cases, they should be ignored (because they are insignificant in number, or because they cannot be satisfied in any cost effectve way, or because nothing they say can be trusted.)

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
I hate these casual Fridays ruining it for real Fridays.

This. Honestly I'm happy to see raiding guilds finally die out. Hoping that LFR becomes the mainstay of raiding across all MMOs that include such endgame activities. Mostly because it is a way for people to enjoy content with friends without having to devout a large portion of their online lives to it. That hardcore raiding environment also creates a lot of negative people. Let LFR become the new standard, let raid guilds die out, and see what happens. I apologize to any raiders that have found a healthy balance with their raid guild and have not become poisonous people, but this is just my generalized opinion on raiding.

Yeah, lets make the main form of end game Player vs. Environment content a challenge of "Is it actually possible to die to this encounter and not defeat it?".

Who needs challenges when you can just be bored out of your mind for 3 hours a week.

People who find some sort of satisfaction in LFR raiding should just quit the game. It's like getting a car wash, but not using polish. You're essentially taking a shower and not using soap.

To suggest this game doesn't deserve a Deluxe wash, or a bar of Zest, is ridiculous. Some of us like to be clean.

I'm sure some do. But very few people quit because they have cleared the PvE content. That means either they are part of that tiny minority, or they can't stand there being any easy content, or they are lying. In any of those cases, they should be ignored (because they are insignificant in number, or because they cannot be satisfied in any cost effectve way, or because nothing they say can be trusted.)

I think people are beginning to quit when they complete the PvE content - at least until the next content patch and its not a model that is sustainable.

I think people are beginning to quit when they complete the PvE content - at least until the next content patch and its not a model that is sustainable.

Only a tiny fraction of people have finished the PvE content (at all difficulty modes). So most people have quit for other reasons.

If you are defining the PvE content as "the PvE content they wanted to do", then that's nearly tautologically true -- if they didn't do it before they quit, they didn't really want to do it. And under this definition, making content harder doesn't help, since it will reduce the amount of content they want to do and therefore cause them to quit sooner.

Last edited by Osmeric; 2013-07-02 at 10:02 PM.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
I hate these casual Fridays ruining it for real Fridays.

I'm sure some do. But very few people quit because they have cleared the PvE content. That means either they are part of that tiny minority, or they can't stand there being any easy content, or they are lying. In any of those cases, they should be ignored (because they are insignificant in number, or because they cannot be satisfied in any cost effectve way, or because nothing they say can be trusted.)

I would argue that easy content makes casuals quit as well. If they can see what they want to see in a month, many of them may not stay for the gear. They may come back in a few months again for a new patch, but by defenition, a casual doesn't have a very high attatchment to the game, so he may just decide to do something else and never come back. This in my opinion is part of the reason Blizzard is losing subs. They cannot keep people playing long enough to be able to get more new players entering the game to replace them.

Before you had (hypothetical numbers) two people entering for every one person leaving in the Vanilla/BC era. In Wrath this shifted to a 1:1 ratio. In Cata, this obviously fell to one person entering for every two leaving. Many reasons for this (harder raiding with no "easy mode" 10 mans being the big issue), but Cata also had a monumental increase in the ease of gearing your character outside of raids. You could get close to a full set of gear equal to normal raid gear, as opposed to Wrath, which only offered a few peices each teir. The catch up 5 mans in 5.1 and 5.3 made this gearing process even easier (if you could make it though a full run) by offering comparable ilvls to fill in peices you are missing. Once the casual was done with running their few heroics a week, they got their VP, bought a peice and logged off. Blizzard making zero content directed at casuals was a big issue, so once they were geared as much as they could be, they left. Most just never bothered to come back, perpetuating the issue of bleeding subs.

I feel like times and players have changed, a lot of people now want instant gratification. If you get stuck on a boss they get discouraged the first week, in vanilla I remember spending 2-4 weeks on a boss before downing it with 50 ppl showing up every raid night excited for progression and it was a very big deal when we finally got it. In Vanilla Naxx we had a kill video with decent editing for every single kill because it was a good feat. Killing bosses now doesn't feel as epic excluding a couple of the end-zone bosses. Originality is gone on 9/10 boss fights and mechanics.

The majority of the bosses now aren't difficult, some are just stupid easy but it's generally the same thing. Make it a long fight with repeated mechanics over and over and the weak players fail, doesn't matter if it's really easy for 20 people 5 bad players can hold you back. In earlier WoW you could have your great players do a lot of jobs to help carry the fight, now it's more about who has the least bad people in the raid wins. For an example say that the 15 best players in the world are in Blood Legions raid, as long as Method's 10 worst players are better than Blood Legions 10 worst, Method will win. I don't feel like there is really the potential to carry bad players on a lot of fights now, you have to rely on RNG that they don't have a mechanic on them. This makes a lot of boss fights not enjoyable, it's a big reason why so many guilds bang their heads against progression walls. There is that chance your bad players will not suck on a pull or not get mechanics on them and the fight is easy for the majority of the raid so you keep going over and over.

Attrition is extremely high because someone who may have the potential to be good in 2 months doesn't get the chance to learn and get better. They usually get cut because a few ppl in the raid can hold back a bunch of great players. Also Flex Raiding I doubt will solve any issues with getting "fresh blood" personally I see it as a tool to gear out alts to use in my raid if we need X amount of X class.

If you are defining the PvE content as "the PvE content they wanted to do", then that's nearly tautologically true -- if they didn't do it before they quit, they didn't really want to do it. And under this definition, making content harder doesn't help, since it will reduce the amount of content they want to do and therefore cause them to quit sooner.

This makes a lot of sense, but you have to realize making the content they want to do finishable in one night is not a good idea. Blizzard has realized this as well, but now that the boulder is metaphorically rolling down the LFR hill, it may be too late to stop it with Flex Raiding. It will help guilds who are stuck on Horridon for sure, but those people already want to participate in organized raiding, normals are just too hard for them. I bet most people in LFR don't want to. I could be wrong, so I guess we shall see next patch.

I feel like times and players have changed, a lot of people now want instant gratification.

That's because as competition in raiding has become more cutthroat, if you fall behind in raiding your game experience quickly goes to hell. The good players bail on your team, good recruits go elsewhere, and ultimately your team collapses. You are now behind the gear/achievement curve and will have a hard time getting to a better team.

So of course people want bosses down as soon as possible. The raiding game is eating itself, and players don't want to be the next course on the menu.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
I hate these casual Fridays ruining it for real Fridays.

Only a tiny fraction of people have finished the PvE content (at all difficulty modes). So most people have quit for other reasons.

If you are defining the PvE content as "the PvE content they wanted to do", then that's nearly tautologically true -- if they didn't do it before they quit, they didn't really want to do it. And under this definition, making content harder doesn't help, since it will reduce the amount of content they want to do and therefore cause them to quit sooner.

An there in lies the problem with LFR - its too easy to complete so people exhaust the content on their chosen skill level, but you cant extend it with difficulty due to the fear of them quitting.
Now that more and more people flock to LFR its becoming a real issue. Personally, Id restrict it to only 50% of raid content encouraging people to want to see more and join guilds.

In earlier WoW you could have your great players do a lot of jobs to help carry the fight, now it's more about who has the least bad people in the raid wins.

This is essentially the same thing. Good player still perform special mechanics in a fight, and they still carry worse players. Overall, raiding has become much harder mechanic wise, and classes are infinately harder to play then the single button spam you had back then. The only difficulty present in the easrliest WoW raiding was badly tuned bosses. Most mechanics until Naxx and AQ were extremely simple, and even those two were poorly tuned.

LFR is an easy target for the elitists to blame, but the ultimate blame rests on their shoulders.

Nah, the elitist players (and the elite) are as much victims as anyone. Difficult raid content encourages a culture of hardnosed exclusion. Ultimately the game's designers are to blame for the social implications of their design decisions.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
I hate these casual Fridays ruining it for real Fridays.